Four of Britain’s largest charities are under investigation following allegations they are using fundraising call centers that illegally target vulnerable members of society, some of whom suffer with dementia.

An undercover
investigation conducted by the Daily Mail found that staff at one
such call center was instructed to maliciously take funds from
those who have Alzheimer’s disease, dementia and memory
deficiencies.

The charities under investigation are Oxfam, British Red Cross,
the National Society NSPCC and Macmillan Cancer. The Daily Mail’s
probe revealed that each of the charities was exploiting
loopholes in the Telephone Preference Service (TPS).

This free opt-out service enables Britons to block unsolicited
sales or marketing calls by entering their details on an official
register. Once a person does this, charities, voluntary
organizations and political parties are under a legal obligation
to avoid calling them.

By breaching their duty to avoid calling such citizens, the call
centers are engaging in malpractice.

News of this boiler room scam comes less than a month after a
92-year-old poppy seller committed suicide, following her receipt
of 200 letters each month. The letters were from charities
requesting money.

The revelations concerning Oxfam, British Red Cross, the NSPCC
and Macmillan Cancer were found after an undercover Daily Mail
reporter made his way to the GoGen call center in east London.

He discovered supervisors advising their staff to request money
in a “brutal” and “ferocious” manner – and
demanding they show little regard for the people they were
calling.

http://t.co/Ghb9nBN196
There is no excuse for charities cold calling people to
fundraise. TACT will never fundraise by cold calling

Fundraisers were also instructed to ask for cash, even if the
person they had called had dementia or Alzheimer’s. The
journalist on the scene, who was working at GoGen in an
undercover capacity, was told to take a donation to Macmillan
from a lady who had clearly started to repeat her utterances.

Baroness Greengross, who sits on Britain’s all-party
parliamentary group on dementia and ageing, said the call
center’s behavior was absolutely unacceptable.

“I am shocked by how the most vulnerable in the whole of our
society are being exploited by charities in such a bold and crude
way,” she told the Daily Mail.

In a formal statement, GoGen flatly denied many of the
allegations levelled at its staff.

The firm insisted it did “not make cold calls of any kind to
TPS-registered data supplied by third parties generated by
lifestyle or survey questionnaires.”

An NSPCC spokesman said: “We have clear contractual
arrangements with those that fundraise on our behalf, including
strict guidance on vulnerable people, and expect the highest
standards of behavior from everyone who operates under the NSPCC
banner.”

A British Red Cross spokeswoman said: “The British Red Cross
will not tolerate lapses in maintaining the highest standards to
protect vulnerable people. We would never knowingly ask for
donations from someone with Alzheimer’s or dementia and further
measures are being put in place to ensure best practice is
followed at all times.”